Marriage; the husband's half-hearted towards his wife, I don't think that marriage is going to be going to well. Would you think not? That's true see, so what God is looking for is that we keep a whole-hearted love for Him alive. Now you've got to keep it alive. I've met with couples and prayed with couples who were married many years, and in the course of many years they've gradually drifted apart. You know it was not one thing, it was lots of little things, and then suddenly they found themselves where they shouldn't be. What happened? The extravagant love was lost on the way. The things, the little things that made the relationship work were lost, and so I want to share with you three key aspects of loving God. Now I'm sure there's others, these are three I looked at and thought of, and felt the Lord drop into my heart, so I want to just share these three things with you. These, we can say well I love God, come into church, well I love You Lord! We sang and I love God. Wonderful.
Now I want to just share with you three aspects to loving God, so loving God is not just about words. We engage Him in our heart and spirit and also it overflows to the world we live in, and you'll see very clearly from the Bible that loving God has not just a spiritual eternal dimension to it, it has an overflow right now where we live and how we live. Loving God has to be expressed, to find it's fullness it has to be expressed in both ways, so here's the first one. Number one, if I'm going to love God whole-heartedly I must choose to pursue His presence, to pursue Him. You have to make a decision to pursue Him, to pursue, engaging and connecting with Him. It's a decision to do that. You know in Mark, Chapter 3 and Verse 14, the Bible says this. It says Jesus chose the disciples to be with Him, and then to send them into the world to preach the gospel, heal the sick, cast out demons. Notice the priority. The first priority was, He wanted them with Him, to know Him, connect with Him, understand Him and to catch His heart and spirit.
When the apostles were doing miracles in the New Testament, Acts, Chapter 4, the Bible tells us that the people looked at them and said these guys, they're fishermen and ignorant people. They haven't even been to university, haven't trained, haven't done any stuff. Oh, they've been with Jesus. There was an overflow of His courage, boldness and the dynamic of His life into them, and they could see it manifested in them. They saw they'd been with Jesus. They saw they'd been in His presence, so an important part of loving God but not the full thing is, I must make a decision to pursue connection with Him. What are some simple ways that I can pursue connection with God? It's always very simple. Here's the first one; very expressive praise. Very expressive praise is a way of opening our body, soul and spirit whole-heartedly, so that's one of the reasons we have very expressive praise is because it's biblical and because it's part of whole-heartedly loving God.
Have you ever been in a group of people and you're trying to get them to sing a song and they just were half-hearted? It's actually better if they didn't sing at all, it's so bad. Don't you feel embarrassed, sort of awkward? There's something really flattening about something like that, but oh and everyone - I was sitting there in the game there watching the cricket and the Indians are there and the Irish there. The Irish have all got their green on and singing. It was stirring. It was really stirring and you see, so praise. Now the Bible says in Psalm 47, Verse 1, it says clap your hands all you people! Shout unto God with the voice of triumph! Praise Him, Praise Him. Clap your hands all you people! We should do that shouldn't we? One, two, three [Applause] Halleluiah, Praise the Lord [Applause] Oh yes, yes, yes Lord! You're simply the best. Oh that's good, that's why we do it. It's in the Bible. David did it and David was a great king. David even did more than that, he danced mightily! Whoa! See? Some of us can barely get a foot up you know? [Laughter] Just need to get going you know and praise the Lord mightily, see? Praising shifts the atmosphere around us and one of the ways that we are whole-hearted in loving God, not the only way but one great way of doing that. The Bible says for everyone to do that.